by Mary Manners
Except for Corey Samuels. Apparently he reigned as King of Chaos.
The kid had a chip on his shoulder the size of Montana, with an attitude to match. To say his grades and effort were underwhelming put it mildly. But his records showed top test scores and well-above-average ability, and something in his eyes told her there was more to the story. He reminded her of her younger brother, Cameron. As she tamped the urge to throttle Corey when he blew spit wads at her white board and made rude comments under his breath, something about him tugged at her heartstrings.
No one had been able to help Cameron, and the end result was nothing less than heartbreaking. She missed her brother, gone nearly a year now. The pain of his death never left her.
When she asked Hailey for guidance concerning Corey, her friend mentioned that a talk with Corey’s brother might help. So on the way home she’d swung by the church where Hailey said he was a pastor, but confidentiality had kept her from searching for him past that behemoth caretaker.
Carin expelled a long breath and released her hands from their death grip on the steering wheel. She wouldn’t allow that poor excuse of a caretaker get to her, even if he did almost run her over with the hulking, dilapidated piece of junk-metal he called a mower.
A second horn blared, and Carin sprang to attention as traffic began to flow southbound toward the outskirts of town.
Just wait until Sunday, Mr. Lawnmower Man. I’m tougher than I look. I’ll show you…
2
Jake pulled into the ball field to find Corey gathering his football equipment and stuffing it into an oversized duffle bag. The sun was a sinking bronze glow in the late-afternoon sky, and most of the other middle-school players were gone, but Jake knew Corey always hung around longer to get in all the practice he possibly could. He’d live at the ball field if Jake would allow it. And some days Jake considered this, just for the chance to restore short snippets of quiet to his life.
“Hey, how’d it go?” Jake called as he slid out of the Jeep and loped over to toss a scuffed football into the battered bag.
“Pretty good.” Corey swung around to face him. His forehead was smudged with dirt, his cheeks painted with eye-black that he insisted blocked out the glare of the sun. The scents of damp earth and grass clung to his uniform. “Coach McCrosky asked me to demonstrate some plays today. He says my throw is really improving.”
“Well, that’s certainly good news. The extra practice is paying off, huh?”
“Yeah.” Corey nodded, and shaggy black hair hid his cobalt-blue eyes. He had their mom’s eyes, wide and sensitive, while Jake looked more like their father. “He says with a little more practice, I’ll have the whole package.”
“The whole package, huh?” Jake grinned and ruffled Corey’s matted hair. At the rate Corey was growing, Jake wouldn’t be able to do that much longer. He could hardly keep the kid in jeans…and forget about tennis shoes. They’d set up a frequent buyer account at the Nike outlet and were on a first-name basis with the owner. “Coach McCrosky wouldn’t, by any chance, be alluding to both excellent grades and outstanding athletic abilities as part of this whole package, would he?”
“Please don’t start on my grades.” Corey groaned as he zipped the duffle bag and swung it over his shoulder, then reached for his helmet. “I still have a headache from last night’s lecture.”
“But I’m your big brother. I’m supposed to hassle you about your grades.”
“I know. Like you’d ever let me forget.”
“I’d be dropping the ball if I did.” Jake smacked him on the back. “Couldn’t do that now, could I?”
“Sometimes you’re a real pain in the neck, you know.”
“Uh-huh.” Jake twirled his key ring on an index finger and the metal jangled. “It’s a big brother’s job to be a pain in the neck.”
“Then you must be the CEO of big brothers, big brother.”
“You’ve got that right.” Jake made an effort to keep things light as they headed toward the Jeep. He was in no mood for a battle tonight. Corey had been living with him nearly eight months, and although Jake hated to admit it, he was more than a little concerned about Corey’s effort and attitude at school. Their parents’ unexpected death had ripped a gaping hole in the routine of their lives, and for Corey that meant moving away from everything that was familiar, to a new school…new friends. If it weren’t for his love of football, there was no telling what trouble he’d be getting himself into. But if his grades didn’t come up and his attitude didn’t improve—soon—football might not even remain an option much longer.
“I’m starving. I could eat two horses.” Corey loped toward the Jeep. “Can we stop at Pete’s Burger Palace? Please?”
“Again?” Jake grimaced. “I don’t know if my stomach can survive it. Aren’t you tired of greasy little hamburgers?”
“Uh-uh. Where else can you get all the important food groups in half-a-dozen easy-to-gulp sliders?”
“I keep telling you ketchup in not a vegetable.”
“Is, too.” Corey tossed his bag into the backseat of the Jeep and climbed up front to settle in beside Jake.
“The next thing you’ll tell me is that chocolate’s a dairy product because it’s made with milk.”
Corey buckled his seat belt and reached for the radio dial. “Works for me.”
Jake sighed and cranked the ignition. Music filled the cab, and the floor of the Jeep vibrated beneath his feet. “OK, I’ll let you gorge on burgers, but then it’s straight home to start your homework.” He reached for the volume, turned the heavy base down to a more palatable tone.
“But it’s Friday night.” Corey’s gaze widened with mortification. He reached for the volume dial but retreated when Jake waved him off. “Dillon wants to hang out.”
“Great. He can hang out at our place.” Jake shifted into first gear, then second, and headed toward the road. “Tell him to bring his schoolbooks. You can study together.”
“No way.” The eye roll was perfected from hours of practice. “I was thinking we could go to the arcade.”
“No.” Jake shook his head. “I know what goes on there, Corey, and you’re not going to be a part of it.”
“But everyone goes there.”
“Not everyone. Because you aren’t. And I don’t think Patrick and Julie would allow Dillon to go either. At least not on a Friday night when it’s swarming with high school and college kids, getting into who-knows-what.”
“You sound just like Dad.”
Jake’s heart tore, but he kept a steady face. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“I miss him and Mom.”
“I know you do.” Jake trained his gaze on the road but reached over to give Corey’s knee a quick squeeze. “I do, too.”
“Anyway,” Corey continued, sighing with tortured exaggeration. “I’ve been praying for you.”
“You have?” Jake was cautious. Since the accident, Corey had been anything but open to prayer. He was angry, and most often that anger was directed at God—with Jake a close second.
“Sure. I’ve been praying for God to send you a girlfriend, so maybe you’ll go out on Friday nights like a normal adult. Then I could spend time with my friends and have a life.”
“Corey, that’s not…funny,” Jake sputtered. A woman in his life was the last thing on his mind. His plate was full—overflowing—with church and keeping Corey out of trouble. And since Corey had become a huge part of his life—a very demanding part—peace and quiet had flown right out the window. But at least Corey had mentioned prayer. It was a step in the right direction. “So you think I’m normal, huh?”
“Well, it is a stretch of the imagination.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“No problem.”
“Maybe you should pray for something else, like some improvement in your grades. Because if I dated on Friday nights, I’d have to find someone to babysit you so you wouldn’t try to sneak out to the arcade or the mall and get into all kinds of
trouble.”
Corey’s jaw dropped and his eyes flew wide. “Babysit me?” He gagged on the words. “Oh, brother. I don’t need a babysitter. I’m almost thirteen, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“Oh, believe me…I’ve noticed.” Now Jake rolled his eyes.
“Yeah, right.” Corey slid down in his seat and crossed his arms, working up a good sulk. Dirt clung to his fingernails. “But you still treat me like I’m six.”
“What homework do you have?” Jake asked. Might as well dig all the way in and make the adolescent sulk worth putting up with. “We’ll get it done tonight because I have to officiate at the Grayson wedding tomorrow morning, and then run by the hospital for that fundraiser.”
“Why do I have to go, too?”
“Because the last time I left you home alone, I got a phone call from Mrs. Jenson. You and Dillon rigged a ramp across the creek and went stunt-jumping on your skateboards, remember?”
“She’s such a snoop.”
“She was just looking out for you—and your bones.”
“I can’t have any fun without someone snitching on me.”
“Well, don’t do anything they’d want to snitch about.”
“Bor-ing.”
“Maybe, but you’ll survive it. Anyway, if you want to go to the ballgame with Dillon after church Sunday, you have to get your homework done tonight. End of story. So, what do you have?”
“Just some English, if you really have to know.” Corey huffed and stared out the window as a breeze whipped his hair across his forehead. “And by the way, I despise English. I think I might start speaking a foreign language in protest—anything but English. I wish Mrs. Baldwin didn’t retire. Everyone says she was easy and fun, and this new teacher’s such a dictator she makes even you look like a real softie.”
“Impossible.” Jake tapped the brake as they came to a red light. “But I can toughen up even more if you’d like.”
“No, thanks.” Corey shook his head. “This teacher’s more ruthless than King Henry the Eighth. We’re learning about him in social studies.”
“You don’t say. And the English teacher…?”
“Miss O’Malley.” Corey shrugged. “She thinks English is the only class on the face of the earth. She makes us write until our fingers fall off. She’s, like, the writing Nazi. Dillon and I are thinking about starting a petition to ban all the writing. I’ll bet every kid in the school would sign it. Then she’d have to back off. She must be killing a million trees a day with it. There has to be some Go Green law she’s breaking. Besides, I think I’m developing writer’s elbow or something.” To prove his point, he rubbed his arm through the sleeve of his dirt-splattered football jersey.
“Is that so?” Jake glanced at him. “Maybe a little time away from the football field would cure that problem. Throwing a football can’t be good if you hurt that much. And the extra study time might haul your grades from the cellar.”
“No!” Corey’s eyes widened as he wagged his head. “I mean, we wouldn’t really start a petition. Dillon’s mom would ground him for life.”
“And you think I wouldn’t do the same to you?”
“Yeah, yeah, I know.” Corey sighed, shoulders slumped. “I guess this is where I’m supposed to say I’ll try harder.”
“Only if you mean it.”
“I do, I guess…” Corey hesitated, and Jake knew instinctively that more was coming. “But…well…Miss O’Malley wants to have a conference with you.”
“Is that so?”
“Don’t worry. I told her you’re on an extended cruise to the Caribbean, and when you return you’ll probably be too busy to meet with her. Besides, you’re just glad I’m not planning to run away to that commune in Tasmania anymore—”
“You did not! Corey, I’m going to—”
“Gotcha!” Corey grinned as if he’d just told the best joke in the world.
“I am not amused, little brother. You’d better get serious real quick.”
At the stern tone of Jake’s voice, Corey sobered immediately. “She said she was going to call the church, since Miss Jackson—um, Hailey, told her that’s where you work.”
Hailey…she teaches a Sunday school class at the church. How is she connected to all this?
“But I guess she forgot, so I just snitched on myself. Pretty dumb, huh?”
“Hmmm…” Jake’s mind flashed back to mowing…and to jewel-green eyes framed by soft blonde curls that danced on a gentle breeze. “What’s Miss O’Malley’s first name?”
“I dunno. Carin, I think. But we all call her Slasher because she scribbles notes in neon green pen from one end of our papers to the other. She calls it critiquing, but when we get the papers back they look like alien creatures have puked all over them. Even Amy MacGregor can’t snag so much as a B from the Slasher, and Amy always makes A’s in everything.”
Jake drummed the steering wheel with grass-stained fingertips. “What does Miss O’Malley look like?”
Corey shrugged. “She’s got curly blonde hair about this long.” He lifted a hand to his shoulder. “And she talks, like, nonstop and she’s got these laser-green eyes that just kind of bore right through you when she’s lecturing you, which she does a lot. And…”
Jake remembered the petite woman with a smug grin and an attitude to match that he’d shared words with earlier that afternoon. In his mind’s eye he saw her abundant blonde curls and deep emerald eyes that had seared right through him as he’d laughed at her twist of words. So this was Carin O’Malley, A.K.A. Slasher.
“Hey, you’re not listening.” Corey jabbed a finger into Jake’s shoulder. “What’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Not a ghost, little brother, but someone much more intriguing.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Oh, but you will.” Jake’s cryptic response left Corey blissfully speechless. Sunday might prove to be more explosive than a Fourth-of-July finale.
3
A stab of homesickness speared Carin as she slipped a frozen dinner into the microwave at her small rental house. Though she’d lived there nearly four months, she’d had little time to decorate, and the walls were still painfully bare. She’d managed to arrange a few baskets along the cabinet tops and had found a set of floral canisters at the home supply store that she’d filled and set on the counter.
The phone call from Phillip hadn’t helped. When his number popped up on her cell phone caller ID, she’d known better than to answer, but he’d caught her off guard—again.
“Let’s talk things out, Carin. We can fix this.” His voice slid over the line, deep and smooth as warm molasses. She figured that’s what had lured her in the first place—the smooth talk.
“There’s nothing to discuss.”
“Be reasonable.” The tone of his voice had escalated when he realized she wasn’t going to cave. “Your father’s starting to ask questions.”
Panic stabbed her. “What are you telling him?”
“What do you want me to tell him?”
The truth, she thought, but knew that wasn’t the answer. The truth would wound her father, because he’d thought of Phillip like a son since Cameron had died.
“You can’t frighten me anymore.” The lie scorched her lips. He did frighten her. He could hurt her—again—without so much as a second thought. “Quit calling me, Phillip. Just leave me alone.”
“Aw, baby, stop this nonsense and come home. I want you back.”
“What?” Bile rose in Carin’s throat. She gagged. “Are you serious—after what you did? After all the lies? This is my home now. I’m not coming back to Nashville.”
She heard him breathing on the other end, weighing his words carefully as the microwave whirred and her fluffy gray cat, Scooter, motored restlessly around her feet.
“Maybe I should come to see you…work this out face to face.” The words were laced with threat.
“No!” She’d get a restraining order if she had to, not that it w
ould do any good. A year at the law firm, writing and filing reports, had made that perfectly clear. “If you even try to come near me, I’ll…I’ll—”
“You’re guilty, too.” The words scalded. “Just as guilty as I am—maybe even more. You let Cameron down. You weren’t there for him…not when he needed you most.”
Carin gasped and jabbed the end button, then tossed the phone on the counter as if it had burst into flames, burning her. Phillip’s words echoed like thunder in her ears.
You’re guilty, too. Maybe even more.
He was right to some degree. Even now, the thought tore at Carin.
The microwave chimed. She drew the meal from the turntable and dumped it in the sink. Her stomach soured, and her appetite fled.
How was she ever going to step foot in church tomorrow to follow up on the issue with Corey Samuels? Surely God would take one look at her striding through the door and strike her down, quick as lightning. She had no place there, yet she had to go.
The kid—Corey—needed her. He was in crisis; she felt it in her gut. And she couldn’t let him down. Not like she’d let Cameron down. No, sir. Not again—never again.
****
“She won’t show up,” Jake muttered as he organized sermon notes at his office desk. He struggled with a serious case of guilt because his mind was as far from the message he was about to share as the sun is from Pluto. Instead, his head was filled with images of curly blonde hair and fiery emerald eyes set in a round, determined face. And that voice…full of frustration with a hint of indignation as Carin O’Malley stood in the warm sunlight with arms crossed, the scents of sandalwood and freshly-mown grass dancing around her.
No, she’ll show up. If Corey’s been pulling the same old stunts, she definitely will. Corey’s antics, especially at school, could easily fill a notebook cover to cover.
“Who on earth are you talking to?” Corey loped through the office doorway and glanced around. Seeing no one but Jake, he shook his head. “You’re losing it, Jake, talking to yourself.”
“Maybe so.” Jake forced his mind to focus. It was no wonder he was going crazy. Worrying about Corey, keeping up with his duties at the church, and now Carin O’Malley—A.K.A. Slasher—tossed into the mix, really stirred things up. There was only so much one person could handle, even with God’s help. “Take my sermon notes and lay them on the podium near the altar. Keep them in order, OK?”
